Near drowning save by off duty and retired medics.

[Aussieaid]

Off duty and retired medics save Mayland [sic] teen.

Kudos to these guys for a true save.

I have a couple of questions for anyone who knows the area or more about the story since we know that we only get the grain of truth version in the media.

Was it going to be much faster for them to put the kid in their POV and drive to the hospital than to wait for an ambulance? If you are going to get them there faster than the time it will take for an ambulance to arrive then good decision making. If, however, it is going to be a longer period of time for you to get to the hospital than for an ambulance to arrive at the scene you probably should wait for the ambulance to bring O2 and equipment to you. My concern with a drowning (or near drowning) is to get the oxygen to them without delay. If however, you are just down the street from the hospital it makes sense to bundle them up and take them yourself. Just wondering what the situation was here.

That made me wonder if one of these guys actually had medical equipment (i.e. monitor or BP sphygmo. etc) and oxygen in their vehicles. (Otherwise how could they monitor vitals except RR and HR?). I don't know enough about the situation to make judgements but was just curious how many people carry this kind of stuff in their vehicles. I guess some of the supervisors and first responders would. Is it legal to carry stuff like O2 etc in your own vehicle without special authorization? I am really just curious. I have some first aid stuff in my car (mostly for camping) but no kind of medical equipment. If you do carry equipment that is not in your job description to have outside of the work environment what kind of legal ramifications would there be if you used them on a scene? Does it go outside of the good Samaritan law? Would you be setting yourself up for more trouble to have the equipment available (and are trained with it) and not use it or use it when it you are not on duty and not authorized to use it outside of work? Wonder which the lawyers would have more fun with? Any thoughts?

I'm really just randomly thinking, wondering and philosophizing!!! Curious as to other's thoughts on the questions.

Again, lots of kudos to these guys for saving this kid's life. The article just made me think about tangential questions and "what-if's".

Cheers and hope everyone had a great 4th weekend.

[FireMedic65]

That is fantastic.. I love to hear stories like that.

As for your questions.. articles are often written where you are given information that leads to believe information that was not available... ie, they monitored the patient with whatever equipment. My guess is it was written that way to make the rescuers looks more heroic or something.

If this were me.. and I have proper equipment.. o2, suction, bp cuff... I would probably still wait for the ambulance. They are better equipped. But, like yourself, I was not there and do not know what fully happened. In some situations I would take them.. it happened before when I was with the FD and a FF went down and we tossed him into the back of our squad (used to be an ambulance and had basic bls supplies with o2). The ambulance was some where else and we did not wait for them. So, I suppose it depends on the situation at hand.

For a near drowning, even though I never experienced this type of situation, there is not much you can do for them besides giving them o2, treating any injuries and ready to suction. So, maybe I would transport POV if I had basic equipment and was in direct contact with the ambulance for an intercept.

[Aussieaid]

Hmm, your comments made me think of something else. (I need to stop thinking here!) This is a TEENAGER and as no one saw what happened (and even if they did you can't trust their word) there is a high risk of a traumatic injury including spinal injury if he possibly was diving into the pool or slipped on the edge of it. You should use spinal precautions for any drowning victim even if friends say they weren't diving etc. I saw an episode of one of the reality shows where the friends all denied any kind of trauma with a drowning victim at the beach. He ended up with a devastating spinal injury and they HAD been playing around and hit his head on the bottom of the ocean and broke his neck. I dealt with a lot of pediatric drownings in the PICU in CA. Majority of the little ones rarely had spinal injuries but there was a few of the older ones who did from diving into pools and rivers, lakes etc. One kid hit his head on the side of the diving board and ended up with a spinal injury on top of the drowning.

Besides a BB is a nice hard surface for doing CPR on if needed and a c-collar helps keep an airway aligned better (midline) and keeps an airway device more secure.

[FormerEMSLT297]

Waldorf is Charles Co. MD, and they have a pretty good Fire based EMS System, So I do not know what was behind the decisio to transport by POV...

Whatever their decision, it seemed to work out fine.